Five versions of Vista By Jack Schofield in London
Guardian News Service: With up to five flavours of Microsoft's new operating system to choose from, which should you go for? It's not straightforward. Major new versions of Microsoft Windows only come along every five years orso, and the next one - Vista - gets its consumer launch next week. There'sno doubt that it's going to become ubiquitous: the cumulative sales of morethan 10,000 PC manufacturers will see to that. But will the changeover goas smoothly as before? The first problem is that there are five different versions of Vista,instead of two. Should you choose Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, orUltimate? (There's also Enterprise, sold to big companies, and a cheapStarter Edition for countries such as India that won't be available here.)All have different features and some have different hardware requirements. In particular, the semi-transparent effects of the Aero Glass userinterface need a reasonably powerful graphics card with at least 64MB ofmemory. Such cards may be common in newish desktop PCs, but not innotebooks. Cynthia Crossley, who runs the Windows Client division at Microsoft UK,rejects the idea that users could be confused by having too much choice.Either you're a home user or a business user, and either you want theordinary or the premium version, she says. Limited edition: That's true, but plenty of home users paid extra for Windows XP Pro - thebusiness version - and the Ultimate edition (ie Business Premium) appealsto both camps. Vista Ultimate has everything, including a limited edition"signed" by Bill Gates. Still, the choice isn't too hard if you look at the three areas whereVista hopes to appeal. The main one is security: Vista has far moresecurity features and code-hardening than any previous version of Windows. While Vista will no doubt have some holes - everything does - the extrasecurity should make it more attractive than Windows XP. The good news is that all versions of Vista have the security features,including the Security Center, User Account Control, Windows Defender andthe firewall. The main exceptions are BitLocker drive encryption, which isonly included in the Enterprise and Ultimate editions, and the parentalcontrols, which are not in the business versions. What about Vista's new features such as the Sidebar, RSS support,instant search, and the Calendar, Contacts, Mail, Photo Gallery, WindowsMedia Player 11 and backup programmes? Again, all of those and more areincluded in all the main versions of Vista, including Home Basic. However, the Home Premium version has extra features, mostly taken fromthe Windows Media Center and Tablet PC editions of XP. These includesupport for HDTV, projectors and touch screens, plus Windows Movie Makerand Windows DVD Maker software. Home Premium also has Sideshow, which supports auxiliary screens (suchas on the outside of a notebook PC) and Xbox 360 extender software (forsending stuff to a TV set via an Xbox). The business versions of Vista have backup and recovery programs thatHome Premium lacks, plus web server software, and the ability to joinWindows Server domains. But they don't have the DVD and movie software.That should stop home users buying business versions. Some of Vista's new features are nice to have, such as Windows MeetingSpace, which lets you form an ad hoc wireless network with two or morecolleagues. However, there are alternatives to most programs, and some canalready be downloaded for Windows XP. Examples include Microsoft's InternetExplorer 7, Windows Media Player, Windows Defender and Windows Movie Maker.You don't have to buy Vista to get them. So in the end it comes down to eye candy. Home Basic does the job, butit doesn't offer the Aero Glass user interface, with live thumbnails on thetaskbar, and so on. Using it makes you look like a second class citizen. I asked Crossley which versions would sell best. She says: "We'restarting to get early indications from the distributors, and the premiumSKUs [stock keeping units] are quite popular. To be fair, that is ourstrategy, but it is nice to see it come through." But if more people buy the more expensive versions, that will increase theaverage selling price. Isn't that tantamount to a price increase? "We'reoffering a lot of features that weren't there before," Crossley replies,"so arguably we've put more value into the different releases. If peoplesee value, they will purchase. If they don't, they will vote with theirwallets." Crossley says that Microsoft really wants the PC manufacturers to come upwith exciting new systems that exploit the features in Home Premium,including PCs that are "fashion accessories". She says: "There's quite adiverse set of machines coming out. It takes time for something like thisto come to fruition, but when you have a broad ecosystem of PCmanufacturers, everyone can get what they want." In the end, of course, it's the PC manufacturers who really need Vista: mostusers have been managing perfectly well without it. The launch is themanufacturers' main chance to attract attention and tempt people to buy newPCs rather than, say, new TVs. Vista could kick off a whole new upgradecycle. Which brings us to the fundamental question about Vista: how is thatupgrade cycle likely to go? Earlier upgrades were obvious enough. WithWindows 3 in 1990, we moved from DOS to a cheap, optional graphical userinterface. With Windows 95, we got what amounted to a new 32-bit operatingsystem with a vastly improved user interface. With Windows XP, whichlaunched in 2001, consumers finally left DOS/Windows behind and moved to areliable, multitasking New Technology operating system that was also moresecure - though, as it turned out, far from secure enough. Bit of an upgrade: So what about Vista? It's the first Windows to include both 32-bit and64-bit versions. Most PCs now run32-bit Windows XP on 32-bit chips. In five years or so, most should be running the superior 64-bit Vista on 64-bit multi-core processors. But how do we get there from here? How many of today's programs will need to be converted for 64-bit operation,and how soon? How many of the billions of printers and other devices willbe supported with new drivers? Old 16-bit applications and 32-bit driverswill not work. The shift from XP to 32-bit Vista should go smoothly, simply becausemost people eventually junk their old PCs and buy new ones. But the move to64-bit Vista: is that one upgrade or two? One of Windows' greatest benefits is backwards compatibility with oldprograms and peripherals, but that also acts as a huge drag on progress. The new 64-bit Vista could be a triumph - or a victim. http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/008200701250340.htm Vikas Kapoor, MSN ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Yahoo ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Skype ID: dl_vikas Mobile: (+91) 9891098137. To unsubscribe send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in